Strauss's one-day job looks secure
Only six weeks ago, the suggestion was heard in some quarters that Andrew Strauss was outmoded as a one-day cricketer
Kanishkaa Balachandran
25-Feb-2013
Only six weeks ago, the suggestion was heard in some quarters that Andrew Strauss was outmoded as a one-day cricketer. But with a series win against Australia and sound touch with the bat, he has out those doubts to rest, writes David Hopps in the Guardian.
England had won World Twenty20 and one-day fashions were designed on slicker, brasher lines. Strauss, it was suggested, was stuck in the world of the gentleman's outfitters. But it was Strauss who held England together with a restrained 87 from 121 balls, a judicious one-day innings, as traditional as a pin-stripe suit.
In the Independent. Stephen Brenkley ponders whether England’s new found aggressive approach is the right way to go about retaining the Ashes come November
Under Strauss and Andy Flower, the coach, England have changed. Their fielding now fairly bristles with genuine purpose. And the same applies to their batting and to their bowling. It is not about being gung-ho, going in with bats blazing and letting slip the forces of bowling hell, but there is a purposeful, hard-eyed method based on controlled attack, bellig-erent strokeplay and rapid, roughing-up bouncers, rather than attrition.
England must decide whether this is the way to retain the Ashes, whether in Australia over the course of 25 days of the most intense cricket this winter they can see off Australia by taking the game to them. Or if the best way is to wait patiently, to sit in as it were, hope to see cracks in the opposition armoury and then pounce (this is how England won two memorable series in the sub-continent a few years ago, in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, under the great captain Nasser Hussain).
Kanishkaa Balachandran is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo